Kirsan Ilyumzhinov - FIDE Career

FIDE Career

Since November 1995, Ilyumzhinov has been President of the World Chess Federation, investing a large amount of his private fortune into the game. He has been enthusiastic about attracting international tournaments to Kalmykia, and many grandmasters have done so. His flamboyant plans to build an extravagant Chess City in the republic led to protests by some people, but have been praised by others for generating good publicity. The 1996 bout between Gata Kamsky and Anatoly Karpov was originally scheduled to be played in Baghdad. However the international response was so harsh that FIDE moved the match to Elista where it received more positive international attention.

In other developments during that time, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov encountered opposition from rivals in the European chess federations, the U.S., and Canada. Some of these managed to a special meeting in Utrecht, Netherlands, on April 27–28. The meeting called for equal treatment for Kamsky and Karpov, the restoration of the traditional FIDE cycle of qualifying contests leading to the world title match, and a shake-up in FIDE. To reinforce this reformation the Utrecht partners supported a candidate to challenge Ilyumzhinov at the FIDE Congress that took place alongside the Chess Olympiad. The candidate was Jaime Sunye Neto, a grandmaster from Brazil. Ilyumzhinov was successful in mustering support from the Third World and from Russia, and he won the election 87–46. There was no restoration of the traditional qualifying cycle, and Ilyumzhinov's own preference for a $5 million knockout contest for the world's top 100 players was deferred from December 1996 until December 1997, with no definite sponsor announced.

In the summer of 1998, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov announced his possible candidacy for the Russian presidency. This coincided with Anatoly Karpov being critical of the annual knockout FIDE world title system. Karpov argued that his contract with FIDE stipulated that the winner of the 1998 Karpov-Anand match would hold the title for two years. Karpov's successful advocacy of his rights led to the cancellation of a planned world title knockout series in Las Vegas, Nevada, later in that year. Since Karpov had an unsuccessful year, apart from his match against Anand, and he was unable to resist the plan that he would have to enter this knockout, whenever it came to be organized, at a far earlier stage.

Ilyumzhinov managed to persuade the 140 member countries of FIDE to take part in the main team event of the year, the Chess Olympiad, scheduled to start in late September 1998, in Elista. However the event started late due to the failure to complete the new venue in time. In the end, it attracted 110 teams to the main event, a Swiss system contest shortened to 13 rounds to allow for the delay.

On June 2, 2006, Ilyumzhinov was re-elected as FIDE President by a margin of 96–54 against his opponent Bessel Kok. In an October 2006 Wall Street Journal article Garry Kasparov, who backed a rival to Ilyumzhinov, criticized Ilyumzhinov FIDE's leadership stating: "(Ilyumzhinov) has created a vertical column of power that would be familiar to any observer of Russia today." Nigel Short, the British grandmaster who also supported Kirsan's rival for the leadership of FIDE, joined Kasparov's misgivings at Ilyumzhinov's victory.

On September 29, 2010, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was reelected as President of FIDE defeating his rival, Anatoly Karpov decisively - winning this election by 95 votes to 55. However, there were bitter accusations of cheating and corruption about the voting system with CJ de Mooi, the president of the English Chess Federation, saying: "This was a farce of a vote...There wasn't even a pretence of fairness and free speech."